The Debian installer from non-free? Never tried it. It may seem stupid when I just grab NVidia's driver anyway but I don't add apt repositories for non free software. I use non free software, NVidia's driver, VMWare Server, Sun's Java and the Java version of Citrix's ICA client. But I use it as little as possible and when needed... If I am going to use non free software I want to make a concious decision to do so. I don't want this type of software slipping in on me because I pointed to a non-free repository.
So I try to keep the non free programs to a minimum and deal with the hassles associated with them. As soon as possible I replace non free with free. As an example I still use Citrix very occassionally but I convinved my boss at work to let me setup an openvpn server and now connect to work from home through it as much as possible. Haven't used citrix more then a handful of times and then it was from computers I hadn't transferred the necessary SSL stuff to to do VPN. The rest of the above will follow soon, including it seems a 3D enabled NVidia driver!
Well when I used nVidia's binary driver on Debian Etch I went through two kernel upgrades and each time I rebooted to begin using the new kernel I was greeted by a console prompt instead of an xdm login screen.
Now for me that wasn't much of a problem. I sighed, logged in as root, found the original installer I downloaded from NVidia, ran it, agreed to the license, pressed continue and was greeted with a message about missing kernel headers. Sighed again, downloaded linux-headers-`uname -r`, reran NVidia installer, etc, etc, ad nauseum every time I update the kernel.
As I said, I know why and how I do this but not everyone does and the whole point of bringing true open source 3d graphics to the desktop for Linux users is so they don't have to learn how or why they need to do this.
Not exactly the same but I found AVG Antivirus for free, tested it myself for a while and then started recommending it to my friends/family/co-workers. Now I never bought the Pro (paid for) personal version but because I liked the free product well enough and got few complaints from those whom I'd recommended it to I ended up settling on it for in house corporate antivirus.
Now our mail server runs it, our main file server runs it and our domain controller runs a network version that allows us to push it out to desktops and keep it up to date from the server.
Now nothing about the above is really anything revolutionary that other AV for networks/servers can't do but I chose AVG because out of all the personal AV products I tried I liked theirs the best...
This is also what I do. I run an XP, 2K and 2k3 Server in a vmware session if/when I need them.
Other then the lack of 3d graphics support (which I was hoping would let me run a few Windows games without messing with wine) it works really well. All my business/job needs are met by this setup. Games... I'm still working on that.;-)
Granted online services in general probably have better equipment, better techs and redundancy that I can only dream of but the intangible that the parent poster is talking about when speaking of control is based on value and care. As a customer I am valuable to an online service and they will take a lot of steps to ensure my satisfaction (if they want to stay in business that is) but they will only go so far. I, on the other hand, have no problem spending the better part of my life recovering something if I care about and place a high value on.
Now it would appear from the group posts I read and the TechCrunch article that Google made a good faith attempt to find out what the problem was and at least partially restore some users email but beyond that they pretty much said "Sorry, we'll try not to let it happen again..."
The difference between me and GMail at this point, as someone mentioned above, is that after 12+ years of computing I've never lost an email I cared about; GMail just did.
Yeah those are good points. Even though I'd like to think I am completely unaffected by it I do see the occasional blurb here and there. And you're right, it's tough to get it exactly right on my DVR, I generally can skip the bulk of the commercials pretty quickly. But I invariably end up a few sconds into the show, skip back a click or two and watch the last peice of the last commercial in that break.
Heck, I even stop sometimes if I see a commercial I like... For example "I'm a Mac/I'm A PC". I love those commercials so I stop and watch them sometimes. (But I still don't own a Mac!).
That's pretty much what I thought. I'm comfortable with the DVR, I have no nagging feelings that I'm doing something illegal. I'm not sure about dl'ing TV over BT though. As you say I can't see a functional difference but until the laws catch up with the technology I'm sure some clever lawyer out there could explain to me why it's OK on my DVR but when I dl a TV show god kills a kitten...
I watch all the Heros I can as well. I don't watch online and I've never downloaded an episode. What I do is record it on my DVR and watch mini-marathon style once I have 3 or 4 episodes recorded and waiting.
When I watch on my DVR I skip the commercials, or if they do get played it's because I have to pee or get a drink. The point is I don't watch them...
Is what I'm doing illegal? How is what I'm doing any different from downloading a commercial free version?
Buzz? Rexx? Bo? Needed 24 MB of RAM? I think not. When the pentium 133 was on the market in 96/97 Debian was working on versions 1.1 through 1.3. Minimum System Reqs for 1.3 (Bo) were 4MB of RAM.
You know you picked the one thing where the guy said: I'm cool, I know what I'm doing, I don't want to use the already- configured-thus-so-easy-my-mom-could-find-it version of Firefox and TBird.
If this guy needed/wanted a browser and email client installed and ready without having to screw with symlinks or shared libraries then he could have had them. But he chose not to, he knew how to get what he wanted instead and spent a little effort compared with installing the packages made for the OS.
Just like in Windows a guy like me who knows what's he doing can change the default HTML editor to something better then Notepad and can change the default browser to something besides IE. Oh but don't forget when you do this that some programs won't play nice with files with spaces so don't forget to set up the HTML edit command correctly (with quotes) or it won't always work. And remember to use IE for Windows Update.
My point is that any OS has quirks and pitfalls once you try to change the default behaviour. Yes, you can do it, and it can be very rewarding for the truly geeky but *most folks* just use what they're given. As soon as this guy said, "I only want the pristine version of Firefox" he became more then just *most folks*.
Well if you like properly configured desktop environments and would like to see less packages (mainstream, well tested only) then Ubunutu is where it's at. (U|K|X|Edu)buntu all install easily. Each uses a different desktop but they all Just Work(TM) once install is completed. And, although you can get access easily to vast repositories of software, the stuff on the CD and available for LTS* users is limited to the best and brightest. Being a Debian fan makes it easy for me to also like Ubunutu, but seriously, anyone who needs a decent desktop for the basics (email, surf, office suite) will have pretty much everything they need once install is completed. Going beyond the basics is also made much easier in Ubuntu thanks to the Synaptic, broader repositories, the helpful community and support Wiki that has grown up around it.
They have a ways to go before they actually surpass windows and mac for production environments.
I'm assuming you mean Windows XP here. I've been testing/using Vista since the first beta release all the way up to the retail version. If your recomending it for production then you are probably in support and are looking for some extra job security.
For starters, one cannot plug in one of those USB memory sticks into a Linux PC.
BS. What are you using Red Hat 6?
I use Ubuntu and Debian. But I know, without a doubt, that your BS even if we're talking about RH, SuSE or whatever modern Linux Distro (meant for users, not firewalls or other specialty distros that is).
Anyone of the modern Distros I've tried place an icon on my desktop when I plug in a USB mem stick, hard drive, cdrom drive or camera. Hell I even get a new icon on my desk when I put a CD into the IDE cdrom in my PC. Oh and I use XFCE, not GNOME or KDE. But you know what? This also works in KDE or GNOME.
Yes, I've used Linux for a long time and consider myself somewhat more knowledgable then the average computer user. But my wife, kids and mother are not "geeks, gurus, grizzled" or any other g word that suggests they've been using *nix for decades. And, to quote my daughter - "Dad, I plugged the camera into Ubuntu and it put it on the desktop! I thought cameras on Linux were all hard and stuff?"... My response? "Not anymore honey".
Things work differently on a Linux desktop sometimes and, as with any OS you can name, sometimes things are buggy but if usability on a fresh install of any modern distro is a problem for you guys then I can't help but think that yes, maybe these people you speak of are stupid. But my guess is they are not, probably brighter then most but you're talking about what you and your colleagues experienced 5 years ago. Kind of like people talking about blue screens in a discussion about XP. Yes they still happen, but the people who chime in about them in these discussions are usually describing their experience with 98/ME. Well this discussion is about Linux distros post 2002, not Red Hat 6. The problems you describe simply don't exist in most modern Linux distros anymore.
Yes, in debian you need to add non-free to your list of repositories.
Slightly offtopic, Etch seems to have lost support for OpenMotif. I used to install this and then the Citrix ICA Client for Linux. Well that doesn't work anymore.
But, installing Sun Java, Apache and the Java ICA Client works quite well. Sure it's a lot of closed source but Citrix just happens to be one of those "I'd always use Linux if it would just run..." apps for me at the moment so Sun's Java really helped me in this case.
A couple more months, Etch (or Lenny maybe) should get a nice Free version packaged and ready and I'll be able to run one less piece of closed software on my system. Virtual RMS will be so happy!:-)
Agreed. GMail could significantly lower my quota and I'd still love it. I currently am using 73 MB of my 2 GB of storage on GMail. And I was a fairly early adopter...
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The Debian installer from non-free? Never tried it. It may seem stupid when I just grab NVidia's driver anyway but I don't add apt repositories for non free software. I use non free software, NVidia's driver, VMWare Server, Sun's Java and the Java version of Citrix's ICA client. But I use it as little as possible and when needed... If I am going to use non free software I want to make a concious decision to do so. I don't want this type of software slipping in on me because I pointed to a non-free repository.
So I try to keep the non free programs to a minimum and deal with the hassles associated with them. As soon as possible I replace non free with free. As an example I still use Citrix very occassionally but I convinved my boss at work to let me setup an openvpn server and now connect to work from home through it as much as possible. Haven't used citrix more then a handful of times and then it was from computers I hadn't transferred the necessary SSL stuff to to do VPN. The rest of the above will follow soon, including it seems a 3D enabled NVidia driver!
Well when I used nVidia's binary driver on Debian Etch I went through two kernel upgrades and each time I rebooted to begin using the new kernel I was greeted by a console prompt instead of an xdm login screen.
Now for me that wasn't much of a problem. I sighed, logged in as root, found the original installer I downloaded from NVidia, ran it, agreed to the license, pressed continue and was greeted with a message about missing kernel headers. Sighed again, downloaded linux-headers-`uname -r`, reran NVidia installer, etc, etc, ad nauseum every time I update the kernel.
As I said, I know why and how I do this but not everyone does and the whole point of bringing true open source 3d graphics to the desktop for Linux users is so they don't have to learn how or why they need to do this.
Not exactly the same but I found AVG Antivirus for free, tested it myself for a while and then started recommending it to my friends/family/co-workers. Now I never bought the Pro (paid for) personal version but because I liked the free product well enough and got few complaints from those whom I'd recommended it to I ended up settling on it for in house corporate antivirus.
Now our mail server runs it, our main file server runs it and our domain controller runs a network version that allows us to push it out to desktops and keep it up to date from the server.
Now nothing about the above is really anything revolutionary that other AV for networks/servers can't do but I chose AVG because out of all the personal AV products I tried I liked theirs the best...
Just for grins, what is your name for the furry creatures in "The Trouble with Tribbles?" :^)
What? You mean the Klingons? Oh, wait... NM.
Mistakes will come back to byte you.
/. ! :-)
Comments like this are why I love
This is also what I do. I run an XP, 2K and 2k3 Server in a vmware session if/when I need them.
;-)
Other then the lack of 3d graphics support (which I was hoping would let me run a few Windows games without
messing with wine) it works really well. All my business/job needs are met by this setup. Games... I'm still
working on that.
What? It's finished finally?
So, did you just make that up to look stupid or what?
No, I was just genuinely ignorant. Thought I remembered what I was talking about.
Thank goodness for smarmy assholes like you though! Now I know...
Job well done. Dickhead.
The consitution has always limited a president to two terms. The US just made an exception in FDR's case because of his popularity.
Jack Handy? Is that you?
Granted online services in general probably have better equipment, better techs and redundancy that I can only dream of but the intangible that the parent poster is talking about when speaking of control is based on value and care. As a customer I am valuable to an online service and they will take a lot of steps to ensure my satisfaction (if they want to stay in business that is) but they will only go so far. I, on the other hand, have no problem spending the better part of my life recovering something if I care about and place a high value on.
Now it would appear from the group posts I read and the TechCrunch article that Google made a good faith attempt to find out what the problem was and at least partially restore some users email but beyond that they pretty much said "Sorry, we'll try not to let it happen again..."
The difference between me and GMail at this point, as someone mentioned above, is that after 12+ years of computing I've never lost an email I cared about; GMail just did.
Yeah those are good points. Even though I'd like to think I am completely unaffected by it I do see the occasional blurb here and there. And you're right, it's tough to get it exactly right on my DVR, I generally can skip the bulk of the commercials pretty quickly. But I invariably end up a few sconds into the show, skip back a click or two and watch the last peice of the last commercial in that break.
Heck, I even stop sometimes if I see a commercial I like... For example "I'm a Mac/I'm A PC". I love those commercials so I stop and watch them sometimes. (But I still don't own a Mac!).
That's pretty much what I thought. I'm comfortable with the DVR, I have no nagging feelings that I'm doing something illegal. I'm not sure about dl'ing TV over BT though. As you say I can't see a functional difference but until the laws catch up with the technology I'm sure some clever lawyer out there could explain to me why it's OK on my DVR but when I dl a TV show god kills a kitten...
Well obviously the MS software that you list is rock solid and doesn't have any security problems!
Pft... I liked it better the first time something like this came out, when it was called the Threat Down
I watch all the Heros I can as well. I don't watch online and I've never downloaded an episode. What I do is record it on my DVR and watch mini-marathon style once I have 3 or 4 episodes recorded and waiting.
When I watch on my DVR I skip the commercials, or if they do get played it's because I have to pee or get a drink. The point is I don't watch them...
Is what I'm doing illegal? How is what I'm doing any different from downloading a commercial free version?
Buzz? Rexx? Bo? Needed 24 MB of RAM? I think not. When the pentium 133 was on the market in 96/97 Debian was working on versions 1.1 through 1.3. Minimum System Reqs for 1.3 (Bo) were 4MB of RAM.
You know you picked the one thing where the guy said: I'm cool, I know what I'm doing, I don't want to use the already- configured-thus-so-easy-my-mom-could-find-it version of Firefox and TBird.
If this guy needed/wanted a browser and email client installed and ready without having to screw with symlinks or shared libraries then he could have had them. But he chose not to, he knew how to get what he wanted instead and spent a little effort compared with installing the packages made for the OS.
Just like in Windows a guy like me who knows what's he doing can change the default HTML editor to something better then Notepad and can change the default browser to something besides IE. Oh but don't forget when you do this that some programs won't play nice with files with spaces so don't forget to set up the HTML edit command correctly (with quotes) or it won't always work. And remember to use IE for Windows Update.
My point is that any OS has quirks and pitfalls once you try to change the default behaviour. Yes, you can do it, and it can be very rewarding for the truly geeky but *most folks* just use what they're given. As soon as this guy said, "I only want the pristine version of Firefox" he became more then just *most folks*.
Then why are you here?
Some things are just funny. Laugh.
Well if you like properly configured desktop environments and would like to see less packages (mainstream, well tested only) then Ubunutu is where it's at. (U|K|X|Edu)buntu all install easily. Each uses a different desktop but they all Just Work(TM) once install is completed. And, although you can get access easily to vast repositories of software, the stuff on the CD and available for LTS* users is limited to the best and brightest. Being a Debian fan makes it easy for me to also like Ubunutu, but seriously, anyone who needs a decent desktop for the basics (email, surf, office suite) will have pretty much everything they need once install is completed. Going beyond the basics is also made much easier in Ubuntu thanks to the Synaptic, broader repositories, the helpful community and support Wiki that has grown up around it.
*LTS = Long Term Support
They have a ways to go before they actually surpass windows and mac for production environments.
I'm assuming you mean Windows XP here. I've been testing/using Vista since the first beta release all the way up to the retail version. If your recomending it for production then you are probably in support and are looking for some extra job security.
For starters, one cannot plug in one of those USB memory sticks into a Linux PC.
BS. What are you using Red Hat 6?
I use Ubuntu and Debian. But I know, without a doubt, that your BS even if we're talking about RH, SuSE or whatever modern Linux Distro (meant for users, not firewalls or other specialty distros that is).
Anyone of the modern Distros I've tried place an icon on my desktop when I plug in a USB mem stick, hard drive, cdrom drive or camera. Hell I even get a new icon on my desk when I put a CD into the IDE cdrom in my PC. Oh and I use XFCE, not GNOME or KDE. But you know what? This also works in KDE or GNOME.
Yes, I've used Linux for a long time and consider myself somewhat more knowledgable then the average computer user. But my wife, kids and mother are not "geeks, gurus, grizzled" or any other g word that suggests they've been using *nix for decades. And, to quote my daughter - "Dad, I plugged the camera into Ubuntu and it put it on the desktop! I thought cameras on Linux were all hard and stuff?"... My response? "Not anymore honey".
Things work differently on a Linux desktop sometimes and, as with any OS you can name, sometimes things are buggy but if usability on a fresh install of any modern distro is a problem for you guys then I can't help but think that yes, maybe these people you speak of are stupid. But my guess is they are not, probably brighter then most but you're talking about what you and your colleagues experienced 5 years ago. Kind of like people talking about blue screens in a discussion about XP. Yes they still happen, but the people who chime in about them in these discussions are usually describing their experience with 98/ME. Well this discussion is about Linux distros post 2002, not Red Hat 6. The problems you describe simply don't exist in most modern Linux distros anymore.
Yes, in debian you need to add non-free to your list of repositories.
:-)
Slightly offtopic, Etch seems to have lost support for OpenMotif. I used to install this and
then the Citrix ICA Client for Linux. Well that doesn't work anymore.
But, installing Sun Java, Apache and the Java ICA Client works quite well. Sure it's a lot of
closed source but Citrix just happens to be one of those "I'd always use Linux if it would just
run..." apps for me at the moment so Sun's Java really helped me in this case.
A couple more months, Etch (or Lenny maybe) should get a nice Free version packaged and ready
and I'll be able to run one less piece of closed software on my system. Virtual RMS will be
so happy!
Agreed. GMail could significantly lower my quota and I'd still love it. I currently am using 73 MB of my 2 GB of storage on GMail. And I was a fairly early adopter...